Monday, April 27, 2009

Digital Magic


Our latest project was a little photo maniplulation. Our client wished to make a large wall portrait of the image with her and her new husband standing in front of his race car outside the church. The problem was she wasn't crazy about the pose in that picture and asked if I could take the two of them out of an image we took earlier inside and exchange it with the their pose in the original image. I first cut out the two of them from the alter picture and cleaned up the edges so I had a good clean image to start with. I did run into a few snags with this image. First the groom was holding his grandmother's hand so his entire left arm an hand had to be re done and blended together. Then their heads didn't cover the original heads so I had to rebuild the background bushes behind the bride and groom. The gown needed to be rebuilt because her stance in each image is different and her gown flows in different patterens in both pictures. I didn't have another image in her wedding album to use that showed her complete gown and in that position so I cloned out the original and rebuilt the pavement underneath. I then copied the right half of the gown and reversed it and pasted and blended it to the left side. This action also required the reflection in the car door be addressed to make the the image look believable. Now I color corrected the layers to make the ambient light images from inside look like they were taken outside. I then added a double mat effect to the image to dress it up. Wahh-laaahhh..finished....just like magic. Our client was very pleased with the results. Her exact quote was: "IT IS AWESOME> THANKS SO MUCH> LOVE IT LOTS> GREAT WORK> WONDERFUL> SUPER> TERRIFIC> THANK YOU". When my clients are happy I am happy.
Click on image to enlarge.

Monday, April 20, 2009

Nevada Rocks

A slide show of some of my favorite images from our tour of Red Rock, Mt. Charleston and the Valley of Fire. Anyone who did'nt sign up for this workshop missed out big time.

Wednesday, April 15, 2009

Announcement


We'd like to give Mark & Erika a big congratulations on the announcement of their upcoming wedding this August 22. Mark and Erika stopped in on Monday and we shot some great engagement portraits for them. They are a wonderful couple to work with and we are so looking forward to shooting their wedding. You can see the complete set of images at our client events gallery.

Monday, April 13, 2009

Valley of Fire






We saved the Valley of Fire for last on our photo safari and I am glad we did. This place is so beautiful. The park is about 50 miles north east of Las Vegas and it is a quick drive up I- 15 to the entrance. The park drive is 15 miles of the most beautiful painted desert scenery ever. Around every curve Wendy and I gasped, " Wow, look at that! " It truly is a photographers paradise. We spent 6 hrs in the park shooting and we still needed more time. Here are a few favorites. The entire gallery of all these parks is at this link:






Mt. Charleston, Nevada







Mt. Charleston is approximately 25 miles northwest of Las Vegas. The drive up is breath taking. The mountain has an inn and a ski resort at the top. We dined at the Mt. Charleston Inn for breakfast. We watched hummingbirds feed against the back drop of snow covered mountains from our window seat view along side a toasty fireplace inside the inn. The scenic drives of Nevada are well organized and easy to follow. Here are a few scenes from the mountain. I have a gallery of all our Nevada images at this link: http://www.pbase.com/g_muth/nevada_rocks